eternal curse
by Nomsheep
Summary: Things really do go bump in the night...


The Eternal Curse

Current date: Imperial calendar M34

An extremely rare smile danced upon her damaged lips as she made her way slowly through the labyrinthine tunnels underneath the coliseum of her daughters kabal. To her annoyance this smile remained on her face as she wandered into a small cavern held therein.

The room's previous inhabitant had deserted it decades ago. Evidently the filthy half-breed monster had located itself a far more suitable lair. She had stumbled across the cavern entirely by accident and eventually moved her entire laboratory into it. The cavern itself possessed a much smaller room at the back of it and it was here she was heading at the moment.

She had spent a great deal of time removing the skulls that had adorned the cavern when she moved in. They had been saturated with a dark heinous power that she had no desire to be near for a sustained period of time. The more that she removed the lesser the power became, though after a while the small amount of forbidden power left in the room calmed her and helped with her experiments. As soon as she realised that this power was so addictive she began to replace them slowly. Most recent amongst the grizzly trophies lay the bones of her kin.

Slumbering deeply in the corner lay the slumped over body of her craftworld cousin. On the other side of the room was a seat it was laid across the back of one of her petrified victims. She sat down upon the seat and gazed enchanted at the still form whilst she slept completely oblivious to the horrors that awaited her when she awoke.

She put her lips together and allowed a shrill whistling note to leave her lips and pierce the still night air. Within moments an aberration appeared, a mere nod of her head and the monster began o rush around to fulfil his masters wishes she watched almost lovingly as her masterpiece began to drag in an extremely expensive and large device. Another almost imperceptible nod of her head and the beast left it in the middle of the room. He then slowly left the room leaving only the fleshsmith and her captive to themselves.

Slowly and painfully she pushed herself up out of her seat. She ran her fingers over the device until she found a small button on it. She pressed her finger into the button and jumped back slowly as loud mind altering music began to pour forth from the mesh at the front of it. She continued onto the other side of the room and from deep within the folds of her robes she withdrew a needle. She held it up in the air and squeezed out the air. Then she bent over and injected its contents into the person on the floor. Slowly she return to her feet and then to her seat. As she sat back down, a small tear welled up in her eyes unbidden and fell to the floor.

Ethriel awoke completely unable to see anything then quite violently and painfully the world exploded back into view. She could feel the path of the venom as it flooded its way through her system. Her head throbbed with a strange and not entirely unwelcome ache. The pain in her head had forced the world to flood back in focus far quicker than it would have in a natural situation.

Although the elixirs unnatural effects had forced her into consciousness it had not returned to her the ability to see properly just yet. It seemed as if it was designed to rob her of that important function. Before it had fully returned to focus she was distracted by a beautiful and enchanting music emanating from a dark outline directly in front of her. The music caused her face to break into a beautiful and innocent smile as the lovely music triggered memories of an age long gone.

The tempo of the music began really slowly, steadily the room began to look more like her bedroom, it had been many millennia since she had last set foot upon her world of birth and even longer since she had slept in this room. The fall had wiped had wiped out her world and destroyed all of the residents foolish enough to remain on its cursed ground. The eye of terror had expanded and swallowed the entire planet.

A robed figure swung the door upon and swept in with all the grace of a swooping hawk. The figure walked across the room and ran her fingers along her face. The hand ran slowly down her face and then dropped back down to the woman's side. The woman sat down on the bed next to Ethriel and removed her helmet revealing her flawlessly beautiful face and identity to her companion. Finally Auriana had returned

A feeling of completeness washed over her upon seeing her face again after such a long time. This was a beautiful time long before she who thirsts was constantly pulling on her soul trying to drain to away. There had been no paths to follow and no limits to her all consuming power. The war with the necrontyr had finally drawn to a close, the soulless echoes had finally elected to retreat into their eternal slumber and wait for the time when their gods would once again rise to pre-eminence and harvest the galaxy.

This time would be used the eldar in order to usher in a time of hope and rebuilding. They would wrest the galaxy from the primitives who had moved in like a plague of locusts in the aftermath of the war. It would require little or no effort for them to get defeat these mon'keigh and claim their worlds back. They would see the eldar immortalized and ascend into legend.

Over a hundred years had waited for Auriana's return. Each day had been akin to hell as reports constantly flooded in with terrifying stories about the many millions who were taken by the great harvester. Eventually as the war had seemed at its most desperate and all hope had been abandoned some lucky occurrence changed the tide of the war. This incident practically handed the galaxy over to the eldar. Few knew what happened, few truly cared.

Ethriel kept her gaze fixed firmly upon the other as she removed her outside clothing. She took off the scarf that covered the lower half of her face and exposed her thin lips. Slowly she removed the gloves that covered her slender Elvin fingers.

Auriana ditched them on the bed and stood up. She began to pace back and forth around the small yet lavishly decorated bedchamber. Her eyes began to glimmer and sparkle as she began to regal her captivated audience with glorious tales of forgotten heroes and fallen kin; she filled Ethriels head with glorious stories about hateful and bitter machines built to resemble the dead and the fallen. She reeled of volumes about gods who strode among men of the addictive rush she had felt in battle.

Finally when Auriana stopped pacing,

When Auriana finally stopped pacing, she once again sat next to her partner. She drew a really deep breath and pulled two daggers out of out of the folds of her robe. The blades were made of dark obsidian. They were wickedly sharp and drew blood directly to the touch. The pommel was engraved with the symbol of a cosmic serpent.

Auriana put the blades away quickly without explaining where she got them and stood up once again, she began to wander around the room Auriana began to feel the walls and the floors, running her slender fingers slowly fingers over every crevasse and bump as if feeling them for the first time. She began to giggle and laugh as she did so, reviling in the magnificent sensation that such a small act brought after such a long time.

Her face once again broke into a smile as the memory faded out of the room and began to change as the room altered. She shook her head to clear it and wondered why she was stood up. She went and sat down again.

The enchanting music shifted almost imperceptibly and it began to change and flow as did the memories playing out before the two hallucinating figures, her bedroom faded out slowly and it began to shift and change, she returned to the cavern many hundreds of years before the daemon had made its mark upon this land.

The cavern had been made of solid rock and little else; it also appeared to be lit by what appeared to be natural light. From the entrance a shriek was heard, then a moment later a male eldar sprinted into sight. Suddenly a man sprinted into the area, he tripped upon a rock and landing on his elegant face. With an abhuman speed he picked himself up and turned to face the elegant goddess of death who followed in after him.

He shook his head slowly at the creature as she glided ever closer. As she drew nearer he bowed down to accept his fate. She smiled and pulled two wickedly sharp daggers out of the robe that adorned her. In what seemed like slow motion she slid her blades into her prey's shoulders. Just before he died the man spoke but four words then he fell slowly to the floor. The music once again began to change and as the world faded his final words echoed in Ethriels ears.

'You've damned as all'

The scene before her shifted once again, this was becoming tedious, and she had buried her past for a reason. On the floor in front of her was a semi-naked and writing form, its body wracked with invisible agony, the screaming of her vision was drowning out the music. Stepping over the writhing body and the small blades laid next to it she slowly walked out of the cavern and saw the dark city for the first time in her life and saw unrivalled depravity and heinous acts being carried out in the streets, men fell upon ach other in the streets, others used warp spawned powers to melt the minds of their rivals, sky boarders flew screaming into the unwary cutting and tearing, filthy daemonic hybrids, neither truly wanted by this reality, not truly accepted by the other, appeared at random dragging their victims off to an death best left to the imagination for it could never compare. At the head of this cesspit of destruction strode the god of war, khaine himself, dragging the fallen body of the supreme overlord himself.

Her dreams and memories seemed truly unreal now, the painful agony, and the long wait for Auriana, the fall of her once great race, the loss of her one true friend. The cavern sounded painfully quiet as the music came to a stop and the visions faded to memories once again.

A hideous monster stepped out of the shadows at the other side of the room, at one point in its existence it could possibly have been female but now it was barely alive. It had someone else's flesh stretched over its face and pinned atop its head with metal screws. It had a second spine growing on the outside of its body. It was in possession of several withered limbs that appeared to have no purpose or reasoning at all, not all of these extra limbs were eldar, for one had a distinctly greenish tinge to it. She had no colour left within her skin as it was almost translucent.

The advancing woman had turned her mouth down in a viscous sneer. It slowly drew a set of wicked curved daggers from deep within its robes. Toxin dripped off of the blade and caused the skull underneath it to bubble and melt.

Ethriel stood up and avoided the surprisingly swift monster; she jumped back as the monster took another swipe at her. She made for the door, but the aberration guarding it pushed her back in. she narrowly avoided a third swipe from the venom blades of her opponent. Years of abusing her body had left the haemonculi far slower than an eldar would naturally be. Ethriel swung at the haemonculi's face and knocked her over, she stamped on her opponents wrist and grabbed the dagger from of her hand, and she stabbed her in the chest.

She watched as the haemonculi's poison worked its throughout its creators system. Ethriel wiped the blade on the rags of her victim then examined it much closer. She noticed that it had the symbol of the saim-hann craftworld on the blade. It was a symbol she remembered seeing on blades only once before, thousands of years before the ascension of the eldar empire itself, in the hands of Auriana. She kicked the filthy monster on the floor in front of her in disgust. It pained her to think about what it must have done in order to get Auriana's blades from her, she had prized those blades above all else.

The anger began to build as she repeatedly kicked he inert form lying on the floor in front of her. After a while she calmed down and noticed the aberration in the doorway had moved.

She picked up the obsidian daggers and another burst of rage overwhelmed her and she threw them at the wall. They shattered and broke; a small crack crept up both blades and then the fall to pieces showering the floor with a dozen small shards. In order to keep Auriana's memory alive she picked up the hilts and put them in her pocket. Then she felt a small prick catch her in the side, her head then swam and she collapsed to the floor. As she faded into unconsciousness she heard a deep rasping voice resounding in her head.

'You amuse me, pathetic fool; I would kill you now except it's worth more to me that you leave the dark city alive. '

She woke up again in a bed within the craftworld of lugganath, she closed her eyes and went back to sleep. She woke up again later having fully slept off the effect of the drugs. She glanced at a small desk right next to her. On it was a small envelope with the words. 'My eternal bride' written on it.

Out of curiosity she opened the envelope and glanced at the paper within. From what she could see, a few words had been smeared but the letter was mainly readable. She carefully unfolded it completely and began to read.

Dear (...)  
In the time before the arrival of she who thirsts we spent a long and beautiful time together and out of respect for what you used to be and what we had, I leave this letter in the hands my daughter the rightfully feared archon of the emasculators, her father saved me after you left and for that I owe them everything, of course they will never receive this debt but the thought is nice.

In the highly likely event of my death a letter will be delivered to you explaining everything, depending on the situation of my death depends on the writing within the letter that you will receive.

Seeing as you received this particular letter it appears you finally succeeded in your unholy quest to destroy me.

To explain this I suppose we have to start at the beginning, after the necrontyr went into their eternal slumber, you regularly disappeared again and again to attack the poor primitives that inhabited the galaxy. After every battle you came backed changed, the more you battled the more you seemed to be wired. You began to physically shake and jitter if you weren't throwing yourself into the fray. After a while you began to kill our own kin in the middle of the battle. You threatened to kill me if I didn't leave you alone.

The only reason you got away with these despicable and filthy acts because even our elders had began to disgust me.

Roughly one hundred years later towards the end of our empire, just before the fall and after you had disgusted me beyond all reason, I left and made my way to the twilight city in order to impose an exile upon myself yet avoid the becoming one of primitive exodites and the cowardly craftworlders.

Then the fall came and I heard nothing of you, I just assumed you were dead. I got on with my life and slowly tired of the political intrigues of the dark city. I drifted towards the path of the haemonculi, a symphony of anger, hatred and pain that I was forced to cause in order to further my wretched and pain wracked existence.

The dark city settled down as much it ever would and I finally got wind of your existence. You had fled to the small craftworld of altansar to escape the fall. I heard of its slow fall to chaos and had you dragged to the dark city in a raid. It appeared you had embarked upon the path of the warrior as I had expected and you had chosen the sect known as the striking scorpions.

But as soon as I got you here I realised that you had changed, you through yourself into the path of the warrior with a vigour rarely seen. You had become an exarch of outstanding ability and had forgotten your past completely and that meant me as well. The only memento I ever had of you was when you gave me your daggers as a gift.

Whilst this letter makes it sound like I regret my life and the many I killed to prolong it, this is not the case, only the truly viscous and cunning survive for as long as I have in the dark city. I have decided the kindest thing to do is kill you and absorb you soul into mine that way you cannot betray me and leave again. Although for what ever reason I cannot bring myself to end your worthless life so I will challenge you and allow you to kill me whilst making it seem like I'm trying.

Hopefully you will win and pick up my daggers; if you keep them safe then my soul can still be kept safe from the predations of slaanesh.

Please release my soul into the infinity circuit and save me from consumption, please.

My eternal love  
Ethriel Thakir

As she put down the letter she reached into her pocket and pulled out the hilts of the daggers that she had found on the haemonculi and looked at them again. The previously obsidian blades were now lifeless and silver.

For the first time in years her own memory flashed before her eyes, a memory of her passing her daggers over to her friend. She suddenly realised that through all these years she had been using somebody else's memories in order to forget the embarrassment of her own past. She stared once again at the blades as the implications of what she had done sunk in.

She sunk to her knees on the floor and began to cry slowly and softly for her lost friend.


End file.
